Viral Ad Network

I’m pleased to announce our newest round of updates to the Viral Ad Network:

Ad Targeting

After the success of our previous updates to our ad targeting,  we’re now analysing an extra layer of data in the same manner to target ads better, and increase click-through rates.

Ads targeting specific countries or niches will now be compared with the performance of other ads in those specific target audiences, helping to make the most out of every viewer our publishers get.

Publisher Dashboards

By default, your dashboards will now show you your total earnings in the past 14 days. This makes it easier to glance at your dashboard and immediately estimate your current daily earnings from your site.

To show all earnings since your last payment (the previous setting)  simply select “Since Last Payment” in the Date Range dropdown.

Publisher Offers

We’ve streamlined our system for offering specific ads to publishers. This means that in some situations you may now start to receive automated emails letting you know when there is a new offer – and letting you know when the offer ends.

In addition – some publishers will now be given the option of running offers alongside other ads, all without having to modify the embed code on your site. This means that you can make the most of the efficiency of our automated targeting system while running offers outside of our standard syndicated units.

Tim Wintle

Happy Pancake Day!

What will you have on yours? I’m thinking maple syrup and icing sugar, followed by good old sugar and lemon.

This video is a classic, and definitely the most entertaining way I have ever consumed a recipe…

This blog post gives some quick tips and advice for SEO-newbies into how blogging can be used to optimise the SEO of your website, making sure it has the best chance to go viral!

Some SEO basics

• – Google loves content

• – Google loves relevant content

• – Google loves well-structured content

• – Google loves very focused content

• – Google loves content that is loved by other people (i.e. content that is linked to)

• – Google loves content that is loved by popular people

• – Google loves content that is connected to other popular people

What this means when you blog – 11 tips on optimising for SEO

• 1) Write content that is very focused and relevant.

• 2) Make sure your blog post has a tight focused title – always thinking “what terms / question / phrase would someone search for?”  For example, if you’re wanting to target keen bloggers, then they’re always interested in finding out “how to optimise the seo of my blog” – so give it as the title of your post!

• 3) Make sure that the link of the blog post (which is often auto-generated from the title of the blog post) contains the relevant search terms.

• 4) Make sure the opening paragraph repeats those key phrases – as the opening 30 or so words are the ones are judged as being particularly important.

• 5) Make sure you you link key words / phrases in your blog, to key pages in your site.  For example if you write “Viral seeding is an effective way to gain brand awareness“.  Link the words “Viral seeding” to the relevant page in your site you’re trying to optimise.

• 6) Keep repeating key phrases and terms throughout the blog post, and remember to do the relevant linking.  Don’t go over board though – as this may look like SPAM to Google’s bots.

• 7) Include other relevant content in your blog posting – so maybe include a relevant YouTube video, or post a relevant (and tagged) image.  This all adds to the richness and relevance of the blog.

• To show your blog post is connected and influential, drop is some links to other more influential sites.  e.g. You may link to the Brand Republic site, if you’re talking about advertising – to indicate that you’re connected to other sites.

• 9) Once you’ve written your blog, make sure it’s linked to by other sites.  N.B. the more influential the site linking to you, the better.  So for example, Digg the blog via Digg.com, or link to the blog from another blog – e.g. the Team Rubber blog.  To do this you might do a weekly blog round up of the best Team Rubber postings.  You should also obviously Tweet the post – to optimise the opportunity for the blog being picked up by others.

• 10) Finally – remember to write interestingly and well.  After all, much of the success of your blog post will be down to the how people enjoy and share your blog / content.  If people think it’s great, then they’ll do the link sharing for you!

• 11) Finally #2 – consider how someone might find your post out of context, and make sure it ends with the right kind of call to action – e.g. you might write an end line along the lines of “If you’re interested in this, then you may be interested in the Viral Ad Network, which provides great fun ads for the best blogs and sites.  Check it out our Viral Ad Network here!“

Great campaign to start the week off…

(by Del Campo, Nazca Saatchi and Saatchi via Adverblog)

Are you struggling to keep up with all the latest web trends in social media? Fear not, sign up to Google Xistence and it will live your life for you. They’ll even email you weekly updates to inform you what’s happening in your real life!

So what is “viral seeding”? To those in the industry it’s a very common term, but if you’re new to viral marketing, here’s a quick overview:

A piece of content is said to “go viral” if it is spread around by those who see it – via word of mouth, Facebook, email, twitter or any other method of communication. (Actually, I personally prefer to use a more mathematical definition, but I’ll leave that out for your sanity).

So the desired result is that someone (let’s call him Hector) gets sent your content from a friend (let’s call her Janice).

Since this is a first-hand recommendation – Hector’s far more likely to appreciate your content than someone who sees it in an ad placement on the side of a page (or “Sponsored Links” on a search page) – and far more likely to convert to a sale/lead.

But how did Janice get your content in the first place? Well, Janice may have been sent the content by another friend (we don’t really need a name for this one, but you can call him Laurence if you want) – but then we can ask the same question about how Laurence  got the content – giving us the social media equivalent of the chicken and the egg problem.

Clearly someone (Janice / Laurence / someone else) must have seen this through some other means – and that’s where viral seeding comes in.

Just as you plant a seed and watch it grow into a plant, with viral seeding you plant your content on the web and watch it grow into viral content.

Of course you can’t just drop a seed randomly and expect it to grow – you need to nurture it, make sure the soil is fertile, and bring nutrients and water to help it thrive. The same goes for seeding online content – you need to bring it viewers before it can start to thrive in the viral garden .

So how do viral seeding companies achieve that? We bring your content to viewers with placements on sites over the web – scattering it far and wide to fertile communities who are more likely to watch (and, in turn, share) your content. We upload videos to the top video sharing sites, flash games to the top game sites, and we provide bought online media placements – charging only when someone views your content, so it’s always in our interest to place your content where people will choose to watch it.

So if you’re sitting on a great viral asset, why not give us a call – or use our campaign estimator to see the kind of sites we can place your content on.

Just over a year ago, I ran some basic simulations of content “going viral” across various social graphs.

In particular, I tested two different parameters – how likely users are to send content to another person, and the ratio of  “undirected connections” to “directed connections” in the graph.

How likely users are to send content on is a simple property to imagine, but if connections are directed or not is a more abstract concept…

In essence, this ratio measured the question “if Alice could send a viral to Bob, could Bob send this viral to Alice”.

The two extremes I gave at the time were Facebook and Bloggers – Facebook is at the “undirected” end (and was even more so at the time) – if Alice is friends with Bob on facebook, then Bob is friends with Alice.

Blogs were on the other end – if Alice reads Bob’s blog, then there’s no reason to assume that Bob reads Alices blog.

The results of the simulation (run on a population the same size as the UK) looked like this (dark red means more people see the content)

Why does the ratio of undirected connections to directed connections matter so much? Well imagine Alice sends a great new ad to Bob – Bob now decides to send it to all his friends – but Alice has already seen it, so she’s not going to send it to anyone else.

Clearly the same thing happens with what’s know as “connectedness” – i.e. if Alice is connected to Bob, and Bob is connected to Charlie, what is the chance that Charlie is connected to Alice?

… which brings us nicely back to the Viral Ad Network

- by spreading content to a large number of (otherwise unconnected) websites through the Viral Ad Network, advertisers can reach largely unconnected groups of people, who can (in turn) spread the content to their friends – with less chance of those friends overlapping – reducing the chance they have already seen the content, and giving great content a chance to spread further.

With our sister company Rubber Republic, we’ve put together a handy article for UTalkMarketing: How to make a killer viral marketing video. 5 Top Tips for advertisers.

It’s a nice summary of what we’ve learned in the last ten or so years. Cheers – Andy

Choosing which ads to show can be difficult if there are multiple offers on the table – and it’s easy to get blinded by the price per action (the most obviously financial number that’s normally available).

Our syndicated ad auction uses advertisers’ targeting preferences to increase the expected publisher income directly – a technique that doesn’t involve increased costs per action.

A simple example

You have the option to put one of two different ads up on your site. You can either put up our syndicated unit, which will try to choose the best ads available to show to a user. From looking at your account, you know that you’ve been paid an average of 3.3 pence per viewer.

You have another offer as well – as an advertiser has offered you 5 pence per action to show their ad – which is targeting viewers in the UK.

Which ad should you put up? At a quick glance it might seem obvious that you want to put up the 5 pence offer – but remember that the 5 pence offer is only targeting viewers in the UK. Looking at the country information in your viraladnetwork.net dashboard, you can see that you get a third of your users from the UK, a third from Germany, and a third from France.

So which should you choose? Let’s have a look:

Placing the “5 pence” UK only offer:

Let’s look at the profit you’ll make from three viewers coming – one from France, one from Germany, and one from the UK.

You’ll get paid 5 pence for the UK viewer, but nothing for the other two.

As you can see – the total income you get from these three viewers will be 5 pence. That’s an average of about 1.7 pence per action, or 5 pence per paid action (be sure you know which one the advertiser is reporting – if the advertiser’s offer has been made through the Viral Ad Network, you can see the total number of actions (including non-paid) on your main dashboard page, and you can see the total number of paid actions on the “offers” page).

Placing a syndicated unit:

Let’s look at the profit you’ll make from the same three viewers coming when you have a syndicated unit up…

This time you’re paid for all three viewers (if you want to estimate how much you are paid for visitors on a per-country basis based on previous numbers, you can check on your Viral Ad Network dashboard).

As you can see – the total income you get from these three viewers will be 10 pence – twice as much as for the “5 pence” offer. That’s an average of 3.3 pence per action (price per action is now the same as price per paid action).

How can I estimate this for myself?

It’s worth considering these kind of calculations when you place any content on your site – and recent geo-location information is readily available for you to view on your dashboard once you’ve placed any of our content. The average prices paid will vary with demand though – so keep an eye on your most recent numbers to see what’s on offer.

Of course, we target on much more than the country users come from – and we’re constantly improving our targeting systems – so it’s also worth considering the average clickthrough rate as well – but I’ll save that for another time.

Interesting use of YouTube – not the most elegant, but fun for a quick rendition of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”